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Too Soon
*** By the title, I originally meant that these warm winters are disrupting phenology. But the news keeps crashing in. Republicans have made overt their war on our democracy. Their actions are most strongly felt at the border, where uniformed goons separate men and women, families from children, not unlike the Gestapo or SS. What…
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More Bits, More Pieces
Eumenes wasp mud nest pots. There were a dozen of these mantid egg cases in this patch of Rhus aromatica, the same spot I found the mud nests in. If there were sheep about, I say this was a bit of wool with a medium-sized marble in it. I am, however, hoping it’s some insect…
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Bits and Pieces
Jawbones. On iNaturalist, someone thinks these are Brown Rat. The coin is an inch in diameter. Same coin, different jaw. I pulled out the incisor: rodent teeth keep growing. 6mm long claws extracted from a pellet. Owls swallow everything. I’ve seen our local American Kestrels choked down the entire legs of their bird prey, talons…
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Raptor Wednesday
Squirrels and Blue Jays were in an uproar about this young Red-tailed Hawk. And when this mature Cooper’s Hawk landed briefly on the other side of the same tree, the mammal-avian alarms went haywire. Since I’d used a tree as a blind to get closer for the shots of the Red-tail, I couldn’t see what…
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Catalpa
Hey, wait a minuted! It turns out I’d never seen a catalpa seed before. The pods, sure, all the time, but always already empty. Both the Northern and Southern catalpas are found in our region. They also hybridize. And there are a number of other species in the Catalpa genus that have gotten around as…
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Monday Galls
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres… At the tips of a young oak, small round nestled in filamenty nests. Galls (not Gauls, pace Casesar) with exit holes. Big question in the wonderful world of galls is: what emerged, the gall inducer or the inquiline (parasite)? Not just on the bud tips. Possibly something in…
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Whale Ho
I came across some research that showed a Bombus bumblebee species whose members got physically smaller in competition with the commercial livestock that are honey bees. I was reminded of this when I read Richard J. King‘s reference to the shrinkage in the size of whales killed between 1900 and 1986, when the international moratorium…
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A Winter Walk
I suspect this is the remains of a Bald-faced Hornet nest. We all have days like this, right? A bad case of bagworm… although not of course for the Evergreen Bagworm Moth overwintering in these things. Persimmon fruit road kill. This is a seed of the fruit. A slug enjoying some mushrooms. A lot of…
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Still More Squirrels
I don’t want anybody to get the impression that all the squirrels are being eaten. Ran into all these on Wednesday in a small patch of Green-Wood. In American Kestrel news: yesterday a female was seen from the windows here for the first time in months. She came to our attention because she was calling.…
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Raptors vs. Squirrels
Another adult Red-tailed Hawk, another Green-Wood squirrel. Sunday above Sylvan Water. How many squirrels are in the cemetery? Not as many, I would guess, as in Prospect Park.While looking for interesting birds lately I’ve come across a couple of squirrels doing their best to lay low inside conifers. On Sunday, on the other hand, five…
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Backyard and Beyond 